


just got lost and slept right through the dawn

by citadelofswords



Category: Sense8 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Character Study, F/M, M/M, Platonic Relationships, Platonic Soulmates, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, cluster study, kind of, that's a better fit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-20
Updated: 2015-06-20
Packaged: 2018-04-05 05:36:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,089
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4167918
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/citadelofswords/pseuds/citadelofswords
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Soulmate theorists argue that soulmates are determined by fate-- by a list of people slated to be together since the beginning of eternity. BPO theorizes the sensate cluster is determined by genetics; a different chromosome here and there, matched by others born the same day the same year. The counter to this is that it would be left to fate who would be sensate; who of the thousands born on a single day every year would share a psychic link.</p><p>  <em>or, where the sensates are not just psychically linked, but also each other's soulmates</em></p>
            </blockquote>





	just got lost and slept right through the dawn

**Author's Note:**

> Most all relationships are platonic except the ones in the show. I may go and explore each dynamic more in depth later, but I really wanted to just think about what a sensate bond coupled with a soulmate bond would feel like, as well as discussing the language barrier a little bit, and. Well. This happened. It's very rushed and flowery in lots of places, but I had a lot of fun and I'm a sucker for soulmate AUs anyway, so.
> 
> Title from World Spins Madly On, by The Weepies, featured in episode six.

The words on his hip aren’t in a language he recognizes right away. Felix is the one who reads them for him.

“‘Who’s there?’” he says, the first time Wolfgang shows him. “It’s, uh, Hindi.”

Wolfgang nods and rolls his shirt down. “So my soulmate is from India.” Fucking great.

He’s got another one, in German, for Felix himself. The first words they ever exchanged as a child, in that first detention. They established, when the mark first appeared when Wolfgang was seventeen, that they felt nothing but brotherhood for each other. Brotherhood and companionship. Platonic soulmates were indeed possible, and not a legend as many said

Which was a good thing, because besides Felix and the Indian person Wolfgang he had never met, Wolfgang had six other soulmates to speak of. Their first words to him wrap around his hips, linking the beginning of the Hindi to the end. He knows, somehow, that the Hindi mark will be the first words of the person who will hold half of his heart in their hands.

A part of him, a dull part of him, a part of him that stays quiet and hidden, is nervously excited to meet them.

 

* * *

 

Kala’s soulmate mark is in German. Not in Hindi.

When she first meets Rajan, he beams at her and shows her the tattoo that neatly displays her first words to him. She tells him her tattoo is in an inappropriate place.

It is. It’s on the inside of her thigh, but it reads, “Is there a woman in here?” in _German._

It is, it would seem, possible for soulmates to be unrequited. And she loves Rajan, she does. She really does. But she’s not in love with him. And she can’t live the rest of her life in a marriage where not only are they not soulmates, but she can’t even love him the way he deserves.

Kala doesn’t even think about the other words around her thigh— the words from five other languages, six other people, that mean more soulmates. She does her best to never bare her back to the world and she prays to Ganesha for guidance.

 

* * *

 

Capheus drives his van and gets a tattoo of the very first line he ever heard Van Damme say, the first time he ever watched a Van Damme movie. People ask him if he has a soulmate mark and he beams at them, showing the white letters clumsily poked into his skin.

He doesn’t see why it’s so sad that he not have a soulmate. Jela and Elena can’t stop bickering whenever Jela’s home, and besides, he has seven people who hold a piece of him from, it would seem, all over the world. He finds people to teach him all the languages his words are written in— English, Korean, Icelandic, German, Hindi, and Spanish— so when his soulmates come around, when he meets them for the first time, he can understand what they say to him, and not merely recognize them based on the language they speak.

 

* * *

 

Nomi’s true mark is warped from surgery, but it’s still readable, and when she and Neets make love to one another Neets never fails to trace it, whether with fingernails or her tongue.

Of everyone she knows, Neets is the only one who finds no problem with the spiraling words around Nomi’s ankles. “Eight soulmates are a lot,” Neets admits, “but I know you’re a serial monogamist, and so these people can’t be anything but platonic soulmates. I’m not worried about them stealing you from me.”

Nomi translates all the languages on her ankle and laughs at “I was in Seoul” in (what else but) Korean and the “I can” written in Swahili, because they make no sense, but they must be actual words spoken to her.

 

* * *

 

Sun’s marks are short. Mere names, affirmations of identity, snatches of lyrics from an American song she likes. One of them is a longer quote— a friend tells her it is Swahili. They curve around her neck like a necklace, and she stares at them in the mirror, these seven different quotes, each in their own distinctive handwriting. Hindi doctor scrawl. Neat German block lettering. Flourishing Spanish cursive. English capitals. Slanting Icelandic. And the Swahili— the only word she can place to describe it is “comforting”.

 

* * *

 

Riley didn’t realize she would find anyone else after Magnus. His mark had scarred to white against her skin, barely visible unless you were looking for it, after his death. But one night she woke up with a searing pain in her lower back, and when she turns the lights on and looks in the mirror, the outer edge of spiral mark she’s had her whole life— the one with seven phrases in six languages— is darker and thicker than she remembers it being, the words raw on her skin. She doesn’t understand; surely she cannot love again, not after her soulmate died?

 

* * *

 

When Will sees Riley for the first time, across a deserted, crumbling church, she speaks the Icelandic curled around his wrist; the start of the spiral of his marks that reach all the way to his elbow. When he replies, her smile grows larger, her eyes shinier.

“I’ve never been to America before,” she says, after he tells her where she is, and he thinks, _fuck_.

 

* * *

 

When Wolfgang appears at Kala’s wedding, her eyes track the chain of letters around his waist. She catches dark, scratchy Hindi written in what looks like her own hand and faints dead away.

 

* * *

 

Nomi and Lito converse in a museum in Mexico City, and she traces the line around his bicep, the one that doesn’t belong to their cluster. And then she tells him, if he’s reading between the lines correctly, to fix his damn mistakes and get Hernando back, and Lito thinks to himself how glad he is to have the cluster as soulmates. Somehow, it makes more sense.

 

* * *

 

Sun meets Capheus for the first time when they’re both walking in their respective lives, and the first time he speaks, she knows that his voice matches the handwriting on her chest; his words trace just over her heart. His are the comforting words; he himself is a comfortable person, so at ease no matter where he is or what is happening. It’s soothing.

He is just glad he wasn’t the only one to learn all the languages of his soulmates.

 

* * *

 

 

_A sensate experiences love in its purest form_ , says Jonas.

He would never know. None from his cluster were also soulmates, let alone soulmates with the entire cluster at once. It's rare for a cluster to be both sensate and soulmate. It's when Will, Sun, and Capheus help Nomi before they even really understand what's happening, or why, that Whispers begins to fear. They are strong, stronger than his cluster was. They are ready to fight back, to look out for themselves and for each other. They are drawn together by a bond more powerful than psychic connection.

Soulmate theorists argue that soulmates are determined by fate-- by a list of people slated to be together since the beginning of eternity. BPO theorizes the sensate cluster is determined by genetics; a different chromosome here and there, matched by others born the same day the same year. The counter to this is that it would be left to fate who would be sensate; who of the thousands born on a single day every year would share a psychic link.

Right now Nomi, in her apartment, shaking and holding her girlfriend; Sun, in prison, listening to her father tell her he will tell the truth to set her free from prison; Will, smiling at Riley on a bridge with so much love in his gaze he could burst; Lito, in the car with Daniela, alive and safe at his side; and Wolfgang, who keeps catching whiffs of jasmine in places where the spice should not grow, would tell both sides to fuck off, because they are alive and connected in a way not even the most powerful soulmate bond in the world could replicate.

It should be weirder than it is, but Capheus' easygoing attitude seems to have bled over to the rest of them.

 

* * *

 

Sun ends up staying in prison and Wolfgang kills his uncle and Will looks at Whispers and none of them are safe, not anymore. It’s looking awful and rough and Riley spends a lot of time trying to not do drugs and Kala and Capheus and Nomi and Lito do what they can, but Kala refuses to visit Berlin and Will begs everyone to stay away from him and Riley eventually leaves, unable to force Will to live unable to see or hear her without alerting Whispers to their prescence

So Nomi busies herself with plotting for how to get Sun out of prison and tries to ignore the sick feeling from her soulmate-sensates.

 

* * *

 

Sun gets _herself_ out of prison the same time Capheus and Kala have a breakthrough on breaking the connection between Will and Whispers. When Wolfgang visits her to ask why she didn’t come to any of them for help, she shrugs. “Didn’t need anyone else to be my hero except me,” she says, and that’s that.

Nomi manages to get in touch with her, tells her that their apartment is always open if Sun needs somewhere to be, and tells her exactly where the spare key is hidden so even if no one answers the door Sun can still get inside, if she needs.

And so one day Neets opens the door, Nomi still struggling with groceries, and there is Sun perched on their counter, hands wringing, looking nervous. There’s a bruise forming under her eye and she has a split lip, but Neets smiles and places her bags on the floor and grabs an icepack to hold to Sun’s face. When Nomi climbs the stairs, her entire face lights up, and Capheus ends up visiting for a moment, drawn by the joy.

 

* * *

 

It’s only inevitable, then, that Will appears the next day. Wolfgang follows a few hours later, shaky with the relief that came with Felix opening his eyes. Lito begs Hernando to fly to San Francisco with him, to prove to him that everything is real. They meet Riley at the airport and she winds up hitching a ride with them. When Will sees her, his eyes light up, and she runs to him so he can scoop her up in his arms and kiss her silly. Lito and Nomi cheer. Wolfgang wolf-whistles, but when Will breaks away from Riley to glare at him, Wolfgang has got a smile on his face and in his eyes, and Will can’t help but grin in return.

Something bright and beautiful is thrumming between them. Perhaps it’s the soulmate bond; perhaps it’s the sensate bond. Perhaps it’s the knowledge that the people in their heads who seemed otherworldly to them are real people with real lives, connected by a spiral looping around limbs. 

They start teaching each other their languages, starting with translating the marks in their loops. Wolfgang has trouble with Korean, and Lito’s German is lilted with a heavy Spanish accent, but Will is surprisingly good at Swahili and when Nomi speaks Hindi, it sounds like a prayer. 

Riley doesn’t talk about the scarred Icelandic curling around her collarbone, but she lets Capheus trace them with his finger in awe, the first time he visits. Of the eight, he and Kala are the only ones absent in the flesh. Kala rarely visits; when she does, she twists her bracelets and avoids making eye contact with Wolfgang, who spends every moment she visits them with his eyes tracking her every move. 

Nomi wishes they’d just talk about the night at Wolfgang’s uncle’s, but Lito calls it better than any soap he ever saw or starred in. Besides, one day during a movie night, they catch Kala asleep on Wolfgang’s shoulder, his thumb absently tracing patterns on her bare shoulder, and it’s a step.

It’s not perfect, but Will is safe now. Whispers is still out there, but as long as groups of them don’t linger too long in one place, he can’t find them. Riley still shakes awake from nightmares, but now she has a real family to lean on if she needs. 

Capheus traces the words spiraling around his navel sometimes, when the others aren't watching, and smiles. It's not perfect. But he would rather have this than perfect any day.

**Author's Note:**

> If you want to know more specific details about a dynamic, or specific words besides Wolfgang's and Kala's & Nomi, Sun, and Capheus', or details about any scene from the show, [send me an ask on Tumblr!](http://citadelofswords.tumblr.com/ask)


End file.
